Refugees arrive at the port of Piraeus following their arrival from the island of Lesbos on Wednesday.
Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

European Union authorities have given Athens one month to improve conditions for asylum seekers in the hope of eventually sending more refugees back to Greece.

The plan to overhaul Greece’s migration and asylum system is part of the EU’s effort to get to grips with the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war, amid apocalyptic warnings that the union is falling apart.

The European commission issued Athens with a list of instructions on Wednesday to bring Greece into line with EU norms on refugee policy, including improving living conditions for asylum seekers and overhauling judicial procedures so people denied leave to remain have the right to appeal. Reception centres must ensure adequate staffing, so Greek authorities can deal with more asylum cases, the commission said.

Greece is under huge pressure to stem the flow of refugees and migrants from Turkey, amid scepticism from other member states that it is able to police its maritime border, the longest in the EU. There has even been suggestion from some member states that it could be kicked out, at least temporarily, of the 26-country Schengen area.

Athens has been given a month to make improvements before further checks in March.

Under the EU’s Dublin system of migration rules, asylum seekers can be sent back to the first country they arrived in. But other EU member states have not been able to send asylum seekers back to Greece since the European court of human rights ruled in 2011 that conditions for refugees were so bad they were tantamount to “degrading treatment”.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner in charge of migration policy, said it was time to bring Greece back into the EU’s Dublin system, although he added that “migratory pressures” on Greece needed to be taken into account “not to put more burden” on the country.

Greece, still midway through a bruising austerity programme with unemployment rates touching 25%, has warned that it cannot cope with the influx of people. The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has warned against turning his country into a “black box” for refugees.

Dimitris Avramopoulos said he hoped EU ‘hotspots’ – special centres for registering migrants in Greece and Italy – would be up and running in 10 days’ time. Photograph: Wiktor Dabkowski/DPACorbis

EU leaders will discuss Europe’s response to the refugee crisis at a summit on 18-19 February, but are not expected to take decisions.

The leaders are likely to complain that Turkey is not doing enough to control the numbers of refugees arriving in Greece.

“The flow of migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey is too high,” states a draft version of the summit communique, which calls for unspecified “further decisive efforts”.

More than 2.5 million asylum seekers are living in Turkey and the EU has promised €3bn (£2.3bn) in 2016 to help improve conditions for people living in refugee camps in the country. However, the money was only agreed last week, after three months of wrangling over contributions.

At the summit later this month EU countries will also be confronted with their failure to make a relocation scheme work. Although the EU adopted a plan calling for 160,000 asylum seekers to be resettled from Italy and Greece to other EU countries, the latest figures show that only 497 people have been moved.

Avramopoulos admitted the numbers were poor, but said it was unfair to blame the commission. “If all member states had done what they were supposed to do the situation would be very different today,” he said.

He called for more solidarity, if member states were to avoid returning to “the dark days” of the past.

Although the commission warned that Greece had more to do, the commissioner hailed “spectacular” improvements in entry checks on refugees. The proportion of refugees in Greece being fingerprinted and included on an EU database rose to 78% in January, up from 8% in September 2015. In Italy the numbers hit 87% from 36% over the same period.

Avramopoulos said he hoped EU “hotspots” – special centres for registering migrants in Greece and Italy – would be up and running in 10 days’ time.

He reiterated a promise to publish proposals in March to reform the EU’s Dublin migration and asylum rules. The system was effectively finished last summer when the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, threw open Germany’s borders to Syrian refugees.